


Mou Leipeis

by truthwallflower



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst, Claude maintaining friendships, F/M, He loves Byleth, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Sick Claude, Supports with Claude during the time skip
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-19
Updated: 2020-01-17
Packaged: 2021-02-13 07:43:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21490798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/truthwallflower/pseuds/truthwallflower
Summary: Seven times Claude tries to deepen his bonds with his friends, one time where it doesn't work, and another where he falls in love. Or, at least, sees his love. For real this time.
Relationships: My Unit | Byleth & Claude von Riegan, My Unit | Byleth/Claude von Riegan
Comments: 7
Kudos: 76





	1. Raphael

**Author's Note:**

> So I totally didn't expect to be making a little multi-chapter fix... I even posted in my one shot collection earlier today, but then the plot bunnies attacked so *shrugs* I hope you enjoy! Each chapter will be focused on Claude improving his relationships with the Golden Deer, with a different character per chapter. This first one will be Raphael.

When Byleth disappears, Claude quickly realises how much he came to rely on her.

Without her, the Golden Deer have gone back to being scattered. They are no longer a herd, even if they sometimes write each other. Claude finds he sees them little. A part of him is relieved.

If he doesn’t see them much, it means they don’t have to talk about the glaring hole that is Teach. About how everything seemed duller, not as fine tuned in colour. About how their arms feel cold knowing they can’t reach out and touch her, can’t move past her too close just to feel her hair whisper against skin. They can’t imagine her lips, quirked just slightly with a matching set of eyes that say ‘our hearts are connected’.

Well. Maybe that was just him.

Nevertheless, Claude is about to become the Alliance leader, his grandfather one foot in the grave at his heir’s ripe old age of nineteen. It has been almost a year since Byleth disappeared, and Claude finds himself missing her desperately. He wishes she were there, if only to chuckle at the way Judith impudently treats him like a benign toddler. It isn’t as funny when Byleth can’t smile secretly (he always noticed) at his scowls.

Despite his busy schedule taming lords and scheming schemes, Claude finds the ghost of Byleth hanging just past his shoulder constantly. He wears himself out in the hopes of being rid of this ominous echo of what he thinks she would do, what he thinks she would say, for the first six months of her being gone.

Eventually he learns to embrace it, and it is when this happens that Claude realises all that Byleth did for him and her fellow students. Because there is a gaping barrier between him and his real allies, the strings she used to knit them together a little more slack without her to maintain them.

One night, Claude sits in his room, much too opulent for his tastes, and chats with her. “What are they all up to…” he muses, perched on his window sill.

He can sense Byleth’s mild disapproval. He can tell, without even looking at her, that she has a tiny frown fixed in place on her pert little lips. He hums out a laugh when she responds, exactly as he expects her to, “You can find out, if you tried.”

“Now, Teach,” He pretends to chastise. Her words already bring a tiny seed of guilt in his chest. “How do you expect a faux princeling like me to constantly monitor my team’s going ons?”

It is a weak argument, they both know. Byleth did it, after all. Claude is already resigning himself when she replies “You make time. And you do it.”

It isn’t a solution and it doesn’t actually tell him how to fix the very real problem his schedule places him in. But, in Byleth’s own way, it is. She always knew exactly what to say.

When Claude turns around, no one is there. 

He visits Raphael first.

***

Raphael absolutely beams when he sees his house leader. Claude’s reaction is a little more tepid, a part of him always off put by how genuinely happy the bigger man always was. As if he, goddess forbid, was actually happy to see him.

“Hey Raph!” Claude tries to add a bit of extra pep into his voice anyway.

“Claude!”

Raphael teeters over to him, not stopping to put down the giant crate of merchandise held steadily in his meaty paws. It causes Claude to jump a little when he sets it down with a heavy ‘thump’. 

The almost Duke takes a second to observe Raphael. They hadn’t seen each other in about three or four months, a big change when they used to see each other every day. Still, the change seems to have effected the big man. He didn’t think it was possible, but Claude thinks he might be even bigger.

Claude couldn’t help but notice Raphael still wore the same shirt from the academy. His suspenders were traded in for a vest, and he saw some cheap armour covering his shins. That, combined with the extra lines converging on the jovial man’s forehead, told Claude an unfortunate story. Not everyone graduated onto bigger and better things. War did that to people.

“What have you been up to?” Claude asked carefully. He cursed himself for not bringing any gifts or, at the very least, lunch. No doubt that would have made Raphael even happier.

The newly minted merchant smiled, and picked up his crate once more. “You know! The usual! Just helping my lil sis with the unpacking. There’s some real heavy stuff in here.” Raphael’s smile turned sheepish. “Plus, I figured I should let her control all that bookkeeping stuff. It’s better if I’m out of her hair.”

The two began meandering towards a cart tucked down past the modest house Raphael placed his goods in front of. “You sure it’s okay I interrupt your work?” Claude said.

The blonde man laughed heartily. “Catching up with a friend is never an interruption.”

“Of course, of course.”

When the two sat down on a log, their backs to the quaint little house Claude wasn’t sure how he fit into, Raphael’s face seemed to droop the tiniest bit. He could feel Byleth, constantly vigilant over his shoulder, tap his elbow twice. Help him, he could hear her saying. So he did.

“What is troubling you, friend?”

Raphael split his wide smiler even wider, rubbing a heavy hand over his face wearily. “There is nothing wrong Claude, not when I have you here, and when my family is safe! I would much rather be here over a battlefield, I can tell ya that. Much more food, too.”

Claude noticed the way his gaze flickered behind him slightly. Byleth told him someone was there, quietly watching from the back door. He made sure to keep his voice down when he said “Are you sure about that?”

Raphael went motionless. Claude could tell by the way his smile went gaping and his eyebrows stayed raised that he had never really thought beyond that. So his hands went to scratching at the back of his head, golden hair still shorn.

“You used to say you wish you could be a mercenary,” Claude continued, “So why don’t you? You have the skills now.”

Claude makes sure to pay careful attention to the look of thoughtfulness that covers Raphael’s face. It quickly turns to a macabre grimness that shouldn’t have suited the man. “Well jeez,” he said, “it would make me feel more useful.”

The slow way Raphael’s tongue forms the words makes Claude’s heart deflate. He didn’t mean to cause confusion. He just wanted to know how the jovial Raphael was doing. Byleth stayed silent.

“What do you think I should do Claude?”

The Golden Deer leader glanced up from his stare at the floor, eyebrows rising to his hairline. “I dunno, Raph. What do you think you should do?”

Raphael turns his head, straightening his posture to stare at a nearby songbird with a mirthless smile. “It’s okay, Claude. You can give it to me straight. I’m an idiot, but I trust you. If you think I should do something different, then I will.”

The two men are silent. Claude, for once, doesn’t quite know what to say. There are so many things about what his fellow ex student just said that he needs to dissect, needs to pick apart until it unravels so he can understand the why of it all. 

It takes a while for him to respond. “Raphael…” Claude says slowly, “You’re not an idiot. Why would you think that?” 

Raphael’s grin sharpens. “Don’t worry about it, bossman. My sis got all the smarts, and I got all the muscle! I can try to train her as much as I want, and the professor can try to teach me as much as she can, but in the end, if you tell me what to do, I’ll do it. Nothin’ smart about it.”

His grin doesn’t wobble in the slightest as he meets Claude’s gaze head on. He is perhaps the only Golden Deer not afraid of the past. Not afraid to mention Byleth. The corner’s of Raphael’s eyes do soften, and he claps a hand on Claude’s shoulder, squeezing as gently as he can.

“It was nice seeing you again,” Claude said softly, sincerely.

Before Raphael has the chance to lighten the mood, a sharp bark of his name calls from the back door. The two turn around in their seats, and Claude sees the intimidating stature of an elderly man who looked like an old man version of Raphael. The image was wrong though, a fierce scowl present instead of an innocent smile. It made the form of hulking muscle man… wrong. Scary.

“Oh,” Raphael said sheepishly, “I should probably get back to work now.”

Claude smiles, even as Raphael’s hand stays firmly on his shoulder. Raphael does not shake, nor does his smile waver, but Claude takes this in with a sharp, predatory gaze. “Get back to work,” he hears Raphael’s grandfather growl. 

His friend’s farewell is as hearty as his greetings, but Claude can’t help but notice the way his feet hurry that slightest bit more to get back to his supplies. He wonders again at why Raphael thinks he’s an idiot so firmly. Maybe the question is not a why, but a who. 

Byleth’s hand replaces the one where Raphael’s had been. One classmate’s rekindling friendship, perhaps the easiest, begun again. The strings between them tighten. Yet, still, Claude’s heart feels heavy.

Byleth’s smile is sad, as he leaves. Or, maybe, it is his own.


	2. Leonie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Leonie may not know the best ways to care for her friends, but Claude knows she tries very hard anyway.

It is about a year and a moon into Byleth’s disappearance when Claude gets the chance to speak to Leonie. Well. ‘Speak to’ probably isn’t the right term, as they’d been speaking perhaps the most of all the Golden Deer for that first two years.

He isn’t proud to admit that, despite this pocket of camaraderie he cultivates during this time a year and a moon after the loss of Garreg Mach, that once they stop actively searching for Teach, the two don’t really talk. There is a distinctive silence between the two. Something changes. It is not hatred, per say. Nor is it a lack of respect. He thinks it may be hope.

Nevertheless, Byleth stays quietly by his side. She calms Leonie’s horse whenever she visits, but she still looks directly at Claude when she says ‘I’m still here.’ It is surreal, to see Byleth standing there like nothing had changed, while Leonie and Claude hatch plans to sow the earth looking for her.

It is during one such incident that Claude is able to stitch the weaving of her place within the Golden Deer just that littlest bit tighter. 

He is far too tired when the red head confidently enters his empty war room one evening. Claude is hot in the stale Derdrieu air, constantly combing through his ruffled hair and trying to ignore how the heat seems to trap in his billowing sleeves (Gods, how he hated his new symbolic uniform). Leonie, on the other hand, seemed temperately cool in her newly fashioned shorts. He wondered when she’d got them.

Byleth seemed curious as well, letting out a light hum as she examined her old student, glancing down at her own shorts in comparison. Claude kept his eyes forward, refusing to let out an exhausted grin at the short bouts of playfulness she seemed to exude. He wished the others could see it.

“Bossman,” Leonie called out, hands on her hips directly in front of his desk.

Claude blinked in surprise. He didn’t realise her strides had gotten longer. He’d barely noticed her coming to a stop in front of him. Still, it takes him a moment to gather his thoughts and to send a roguish grin his comrade’s way. “Dare I ask how it went?”

He already knows, from the slight frown on Leonie’s face, that it did not go well. It is the lack of creases between her brows that at least tells him she ran into no significant trouble, that no troops have been wasted on what his councilmen conclude to be a foolish waste of time at best. 

Or, at least, he would have known, if he hadn’t gotten distracted by how suddenly thirsty he was. When was the last time he’d eaten again? Claude couldn’t remember.

“No troubles,” her voice sounded out of reach. “But no miracles either.”

His mind caught on the word ‘miracle’. Yes. That’s what Byleth was, wasn’t she? He couldn’t even see her now, though he was sure she was basking on the chaise under his largest window in the room, staring out the window to see the first star of the night. He never actually saw her do this, but the slight satisfied smile he sometimes spotted on her face when she looked at him told him she must have seen something good.

“Claude.”

The Alliance leader blinked sluggishly. “Huh?”

The room spun for a moment, his chair almost swinging out from under him as it tilted sideways. The room didn’t stop spinning, even as Leonie’s face came to rest too close in front of his own. The fellow archer was frowning intently, her skin puckering a dimple into one cheek. Claude tried to focus on it, the annoyance (and maybe worry?) in her eyes too dizzying for him to read at that moment.

“Goddess Sothis!” Claude’s face remained flat at the curse. “What’s wrong with you? You look like a leper stayed too long at a hot spring.”

Claude barely registered what she said, even as a gloved hand hissed back from his forehead. Instead, all he saw was orange as the world tipped.

***

When Claude wakes up next, it is to a dark bedroom and a moonlit vigil. 

By vigil, he really means Leonie. She sits crosslegged at the foot of his too large bed (He spots Byleth hovering by his bedside. The quick flash of a weak smile doesn’t seem to impress upon her, judging by the worried furrow he wishes he could smooth out of her brows), the tops of her slightly longer hair and the sharp end of a lance all that is visible from the tops of his oak bed end.

She must hear him move as he wakes, because next all he sees is catlike eyes glowing in the dark. “Claude? Are you alright?”

It is a struggle for Claude to sit up, his boots, laces still tightly wound, dragging across the top of silk as he tried to sit up. His face feels hot, the side of his braid sticking to his cheek. “No,” he muttered darkly, dragging a hand across his face.

Leonie looked disapproving. “That’s because you overworked yourself. Do you know what would have happened if someone waiting for just the right chance had been the ones to find you half unconscious first?”

Claude tried a smile in hopes of disarming her. He was very well aware of what could have happened. He never realised her practicality transferred to matters of political and cloak and dagger schemes. He glanced to the side at Byleth, seeing her worry instead transformed into a hard look. “I may not know much about politics,” Byleth was serious “But I know how to protect people. I know how to teach people how to protect people.”

Claude hoped Leonie didn’t notice how his smile wavered because of their teacher’s words. He should have paid more attention. He let out a soft, almost scathing sigh. “Was it poison?”

The would be mercenary still had that intense look on her face. “No. You had a fever because you weren’t taking care of yourself.”

Claude glanced to his bedside. There was no water or herbs to alleviate his temperature. He was still sweating quite a lot, actually. “Nice to see your bedside manner, Leonie.”

The woman sputtered, a tinge of embarrassment coating her cheeks. “Uh- Well! If you want a bedside manner you’ll have to wait for me to bring back the professor! Goddess, she seems to be the only other person that needs more protecting than you!”

Claude’s head spun, only he couldn’t tell if it was his illness or Leonie’s words. First Raphael, now her? Byleth disappeared from the corner of his eye. It was almost like everyone was getting more and more comfortable talking about her memory. Saying that; since when had it been conclusive that his teach would naturally be his nurse?

The idea of Byleth patiently waiting on him, cool fingers untying the cravat that suddenly felt too close to his throat, sent a warm rush through his body that had nothing to do with his fever. Claude’s mind clouded. Fever had never caused him to have such odd thoughts about Byleth before.

Finally, swallowing a dry throat, he took the gumption to reply. “Do not,” he said petulantly.

Leonie merely rolled her eyes, crossing her arms over her lance as she stared down at him. There was silence between them for a moment. It was oddly quiet when she split the silence “Claude… If you need…”

She paused there, and even through the discomfort of sweat sticking to his hair didn’t stop him from noticing how hesitantly she curled her fingers inwards against her forearms. He was pale and sickly, and really all he wanted was sleep, but he still waited patiently until she said “If you need that protection… until we find the professor, I can do that for you. Protect you, that is.”

The moment that hangs between them is awkward. Claude is baffled, and Leonie is just uncomfortable. He can tell by the way she refuses to make eye contact that she probably wishes she’d never said anything. Eventually, he carefully said, “I know you don’t offer that protection lightly.”

Leonie’s back straightened slightly, even as her grip on her lance tightened and her eyes remained glued to the floor. He could see Byleth standing behind her, hand resting reassuringly against her ex student’s shoulder. It is this sign of reassurance, of how desperately he knows Byleth would wish to be here for her, that makes his reply steady and certain, even as he feels his eyes blinking sluggishly. “I also know that protection would be wasted effort in comparison to finding our dear old Teach.”

He smiles. Although it is slow to reach his face, it is sincere. Perhaps one of the only ones Leonie has seen without the professor physically present. Still, she softens. It is still the professor that is really bringing it to his face. “Yeah,” she says.

Claude rests his hands, knitted together, over his chest as he smiles at her. “Keep looking,” he says softly, “I know we’ll find her.”

Leonie resists looking behind her. Claude seems to have his eyes focused on an empty spot over her shoulder. So she bows once, stiffly, and wishes he rests well. “You must have a good luck charm,” she says over her shoulder as she starts to leave. She means it about her being the one to find him in his state of delirium, but a small part of her thinks she means about how certain he is he will find the professor.

Claude’s reply is dreamy when he says “Oh, I really do.”

Even Leonie, who’s reputation as a mercenary (and as a friend, a quiet part deep inside of her whispers) is what hangs in the balance of the professor being found, has her doubts. But Claude has his heart, and she thinks it will be enough.

She closes the door after her, and pretends she doesn’t hear her friend’s mad ramblings as he talks himself to sleep.


	3. Marianne

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Marianne has come a long way since their academy days.

Claude adjusts to life as Duke Reigan quicker than anyone expects. He stands tall at meetings and grins widely at commoners, quick on his feet and quick on the uptake. He pretends not to see the light veneer of derision that occasionally drops from the eyes of his roundtable fellows. 

When Hilda and Lorenz visit with their dignitary relatives, they roll their eyes and titter at the pomp and twisted acts Claude jumps through like hoops on fire. They, however unwilling they are to admit it, are the most aware, even more so than Judith cunningly scanning the situation with interest, what their house leader can do. What he is capable of.

Byleth holds her chin high with a clasp to her jaw Claude does not recognise. He doesn’t have time to ask, too busy with work and guilt hovering behind him in the form of her face. Her voice still sounds as he remembers it, but two years after her disappearance and all her form does, instead of filling him with assuredness and determination, is cause a little pit of misery in his chest. 

He still hasn’t found her. The longer it takes, the more pitied looks are thrown his way. He wants to scream at them that she’s alive, he knows she is, she’s right there, everyone will see. Claude gives Byleth sad smiles when no one is looking, desperation taut in his eyes. Lately, it is these smiles and a repeating mantra of ‘I miss you, I miss you, I miss you’ that mainly takes up the private time between them. As if his mind isn’t pretending she is kneeling with a mournful face, trying her best to cup his cheeks in her lithe hands and respond. He blocks out her responses, conjuring’s of his own mind anyway.

He needs the real Byleth.

So he keeps his back straight and smile pinned as sharply as the needle stitching his cape to one shoulder. He isn’t sure if his friends notice. Is unsure if they understand the severity of ruling with dark skin and thick hair. He is sure they notice his seclusion in the recent months, even as his mind roars at him to keep talking, keep holding on.

One day, his eyes weary but lips still quirking ever upwards, this side of his that roars, takes in the sight of noble heirs scattered within a lofty room of the Edmund Manor. 

“Where’s Marianne?”

Hilda fiddled with her hair, braiding it in two sections as she hummed distractedly. The level of intricacy paid to the braid bellied her lack of interest. “I dunno.”

Lorenz straightened his shoulders. There was nothing he loved more than being necessary. “Yes, tis odd we have seen no sign of our esteemed host’s heir.”

Hilda huffed, crossing her legs and rolling her eyes. “Don’t be silly Lorenz, it’s odd because Marianne is our friend!” She turned to Claude. “This is her house, Claude, so why don’t you just go find her? She’s bound to be here somewhere.”

Claude only frowned at that. Marianne had matured a lot over the last couple of years, and greeting her housemates and hosting them was perhaps where she was her most exuberant, as backwards as that word was in reference to her. Usually Marianne was the first person he would see when at the Edmund Estate, not the last.

Lorenz opened up his mouth airily to offer up his two cents, but the swishing of Claude’s cape as he swept from the room cut off anything he was about to say. Hilda giggled at his expense, offering up a loose goodbye as Claude left their sight.

Byleth’s figure, striding ahead of him as always, cut an imposing figure. She was but a ghost down a bereft hallway full of portraits of those long dead. Claude wondered if the real Byleth would so certainly clip down the same hallway. He wondered if she would be so comfortable surrounded by such squalor and riches, a covetous hallway of tapestries and oil paintings, very different from the cobblestone corridors of the monastery,, where chills from old buildings replaced lush carpets.

His minds conjuring’s showed their failures in moments like these. There was only so far his imagination could stretch.

It didn’t take Claude long to come across a scullery maid, brusque in a way Claude was sure Marianne envied. She showed him the way, up a few twisty stairways and across a few more hallways that held more intimate portraits. Eventually, after converging through three different rooms, he found himself at the entrance to a balcony overlooking the forested space behind the estate. A memory of Marianne’s haunted eyes seemed to match the gloomy forest she’d stared out at her whole life.

The maid bowed promptly and left the room. Marianne sat at a tea table, the table empty but of complicated lattice work that made it too delicate and pretty to be good for much other than tea. The chairs were equally as delicate, but a moment flashed through his mind where he imagined Byleth and Marianne dining here together, legs crossed primly and small but comfortable smiles across their faces.

Marianne seemed to know what he was thinking, if the ghostly smile she greeted him with was any indication. “Hello, Claude.”

His own smile was a little more tight. He could do serene. He could do Byleth. He wouldn’t mess this up. “Hey, Marianne.”

Claude quickly realised he wasn’t sure how he could pull off serene and idle chatter at the same time. He took a seat on the available chair across from the healer, keeping his gaze focused on Marianne while she stared out at the forest. Her body faced him, yet her neck and head craned to the side as if there was a physical force holding her gaze.

Claude didn’t hold any interest in the forest. “How are you, Marianne?”

Once upon a time, that small comment would have startled her. Now, she turned her head to him as if nothing out of the ordinary was going on. The bags under her eyes weren’t quite gone. “I am well, Claude. Today is a good day.”

The duke felt a real smile twitch his lips. The sun felt a little warmer today, didn’t it? His tone was still delicate, however, when he said, “There was a meeting today.”

Marianne blushed and looked away. “O-oh.”

Claude felt his eyes soften. “Don’t worry about it. You didn’t miss much.”

Marianne’s smile was sad. Claude pretended not to notice, taking his turn to stare out into the forest. Maybe he would see his own ghosts there, lingering behind the trees and whispering between branches. He ignored the soft curvature of Marianne’s eyes that told him she knew missing much only meant he missed one thing. One person.

“And how are you?”

There is a moment’s pause. The silence between them feels weighted, but one glance at Marianne just tells him that it is he who is feeling anxious, because Marianne is the picture of sincerity. She doesn’t mention a name, she doesn’t have to, but the empty hollow his lips tip into says enough. She doesn’t need to say anything more, but the fact he lingers behind his smirks and she recluses behind her manor feels like a dirty secret.

Claude knows it isn’t fair to think like that. Marianne is making progress, is smiling more and has a healthier pallor than she ever did at the academy. He can’t help but feel like he lied to her, or broke a promise. His demons have only increased since then.

Yet, he realises, Byleth is gone. She has been gone this whole while. There is no spectre lounging against the balcony rails, or staring in mourning at all she has missed. It is one of the only times he doesn’t have her looming over him.

Maybe it’s because of that that his smile is a little more pained than hollow when he finally answers. “I’ve been good.”

**Author's Note:**

> The title is a googled translation of 'I miss you' in Greek! Sorry if it's butchered! Also the summary used to something else but I wasn't altogether happy with it so it has since been changed.


End file.
